


Three Months

by Miri1984



Category: Cracksmash - Fandom, Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-07
Updated: 2012-12-07
Packaged: 2017-11-20 12:46:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/585577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miri1984/pseuds/Miri1984
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set during the time Tony is a prisoner of the Ten Rings. Pepper Potts is at home, being Pepper Potts, and occasionally worrying about Tony too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Months

**Author's Note:**

  * For [historymiss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/historymiss/gifts), [vanessasketch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanessasketch/gifts).



**_24 Hours_ **

She thinks that usually, if Tony went missing, _they_ wouldn’t know for days. Obadiah would assume he’d flown back to Malibu with a girl. Rhodey would assume he’d had some idea and decided to bury himself in the workshop and hold all his calls but of course, in the end, they’d call her, and she’d tell them where he was, and then she’d have the job of convincing him whatever they wanted from him was important enough for him to make time for it…

…Or for her to make time for it for him.

This time, Rhodey was with him when they were attacked and this time, this time she’s the _last_ to find out.

For some reason that’s the thing that annoys her the most. 

At first.

 

**_Six Days_ **

Obadiah is kicking up an enormous fuss. She gets a phone call from Rhodey, asking if she can’t possibly reign him in a bit, considering the man has called his direct superiors, senators, even the president demanding they order strikes on the area where Tony went missing. 

“It’s a mess, Pepper, and Obadiah doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about.”

“He’s upset.” _So am I._

“I know, we all are, but he’s really not helping. There’s a search going on. He’s got to understand that there’s a whole lot of ground to cover and the people we’re dealing with…”

“I know, James, you don’t have to explain it to me. Obi just needs to feel like he’s doing something.”

There’s a pause over the line. She can hear James breathing, and she remembers all the times Tony’s talked about him, and knows that he’s as worried as she is, probably more because at least he _could have done something could have saved him why didn’t he stop them from taking him…_

“It’s not your fault, James,” her voice is calm, authoritative, and competent.

Like always.

“You’re wrong, Pepper, but thanks for saying it.”

 

**_Two Weeks_ **

They’re starting to tell her they need to move the company into Obi’s name. Not directly, of course, just little hints here and there, from legal, about what would be necessary, how they need to arrange it. It makes her so angry that at one point she has to put the phone down and wipe tears from her eyes, sitting at his desk, in his ridiculous office, far too big for one man, especially one man who thinks paperwork is something that happens to other people (it is) and paper books are a waste and outdated.

“It’s a status thing, Pep,” he said to her, when she said the office space could be used for better things. “Gotta have the biggest office.”

She’d raised an eyebrow at him and he’d smirked.

 

**_One month_ **

She’s not sure, exactly, at which point she started thinking about looking for another job. It might have been when Obidiah asked her to pick something up from the house in Malibu. The bedroom still smelt like that journalist, even though the help had been in to make the bed. She didn’t even know why she’d gone in there. She didn’t normally go into his bedroom. 

Not that anything about anything she did for him was normal. 

What Obi wanted was in the workshop, and Dummy swivelled to look at her forlornly when she punched the code, even though she knew he didn’t have eyes, or emotions. She swears he chirped at her when she walked out again, locking the door behind her.

There was dust on his benches. He was going to hate that when he got back. But if she let the cleaners in he’d hate it more.

 

**_Two and a half months_ **

The press are calling her apartment to ask when the company is going to be handed over. Rhodey has _stopped_ calling and she misses his voice. They never talked about Tony, as such, over the phone, but just… having contact with him made her feel that Tony was still around. 

Obi swears a lot. At everyone except for her. Her, he treats like glass, smiling in sympathy and touching her shoulder as though she’s a grieving widow. After a while, she starts avoiding him.

She has submitted her resume to three different companies. 

On the morning of the rescue, she decides not to go in to work. Obidiah doesn’t trust her to do what needs to be done and the company is suffering for it in little ways that only she can see. Not that Tony would have seen it either, but she would have told him about it and he would have told _her_ to fix it and that would have been it. Now she has to try to make Obi see without making it look like she’s the one who’s spotted it and it’s frustrating and time wasting and making her stare at her phone and her inbox in a combination of dread and hope. 

If she gets another job, it’ll be done, she’ll be gone and she won’t have to miss his stupid face any more.

 

**_Three Months_ **

When Rhodey calls she can hear Tony in the background. 

In the car, on the way to the airport, Obidiah is on the phone. 

“Why didn’t they tell us as soon as they found him?” he sounds upset, not relieved the way he _should_ sound, and Pepper would be more fed up with him if she didn’t have fifty other things to do. She has her starkpad out on her lap and is emailing as she talks to Obi, organising press, informing legal, making sure no one thinks Tony is coming back to a position that was nearly taken from him in his absence.

“Obi, it’s Rhodey, you know he would have if he could, but this is _military_ he can’t leak classified information out of a war zone just because we’re worried about Tony…”

“All this time, I thought they’d stopped looking!”

Pepper hadn’t. You couldn’t hear Rhodey’s voice on the phone, see his face, and think that he’d ever stop looking for Tony. Even if the military hadn’t ordered it. He’d been the one, in the rescue helicopter. Out of everyone they could have sent, Lieutenant Colonel James Rhodes had got on a chopper with a bunch of grunts to go out into the desert and rescue his friend. 

“Rhodey wouldn’t do that, Obi.”

“No. No, I guess he wouldn’t.”

“Do you want me to tell Tony anything?” she finishes her last email, sending it off to the jobs she’d applied to, withdrawing her applications. One of them has already offered her a package. 

“Tell him to get his ass back home,” Obi says.

She laughs and hangs up.

 

He notices that she’s been crying, despite years of knowing how to manipulate cosmetics to her advantage, and somehow the fact that he notices makes her want to cry again.

 

**_Six months later_ **

He doesn’t tell her things. She’s always known that. But since he got back he doesn’t tell her more than he used to. He doesn’t mention what happened in the cave, but he looks at her, sometimes, with a blankness that frightens. He’s closer, and he’s further away, and she thinks, once, she caught a glimpse of darkness spreading out from the arc reactor, the light under his shirt throwing it into relief, like fingers clutching at his heart, death spreading outwards from the very thing that saved him.

He stops wearing white after that, and she thinks he is pushing her away.

She wonders if there will come a time when he will _not_ drive her crazy.


End file.
